The Forgotten Faithful: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 2) by Cajiao, Jez (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📕

She must have been over eight meters in length easily, with her upper body raised over the coils of her tail.

She twisted around, turning to her right, even as I went to her left, reaching out and grabbing a thick spine where it jutted from her lower back.

I held on tight, using the spine to brace myself, my feet slamming into her back and I twisted, using not only my arms and back, but all the momentum of my waist as well to drive the sword upwards.

The chisel-thick tip of the blade, designed for punching through thick lamellar plates of armor, had no issue with her scales. It drove in and up, as I angled the hilt down and rammed it as far as I could.

She screamed in shock and pain, thrashing wildly as the battle paused, the combatants all stunned by the appearance in the middle of the room of a fourth party, one that was riding the most feared creature there.

“Yippie-Ki-ay Mother…” I growled out as she spun and thrashed, frantically trying to throw me off, her arms flapping wildly, trying to get enough of an angle to reach me. I held on, bitterly determined to kill this bitch, and I twisted the blade, yanking it back and forth, imagining an egg scrambler inside her lower chest.

She screamed in pain and finally managed to grab my wrist in one huge clawed hand. She yanked, breaking my grip and throwing me free easily, my sword still embedded in her gut, and I cartwheeled across the room to smack into a fallen section of stonework, my bones shattering with the force of the impact...

I collapsed to the floor, the stabbing feeling of dozens of fragments of broken ribs piercing my lungs enough to let me know I was out of the fight.

I barely had the strength to raise my head, but when the world stopped spinning long enough to focus, I saw the blue skinned creatures had counter attacked. They were driving the crustaceans back on one side; dozens of cracked and shattered corpses covered the ground near them, and on the other, they were beating back the merrow.

I grinned at the chieftainess as she collapsed, the floor shaking with the impact of her enormous bulk. She managed to look at me, her all too human face staring at me across the room, as blood ran from her mouth.

I lifted one shaking hand, slowly extending a single digit. the fury that flashed across her face made it clear that, whatever else was different between the realms, this insult at least seemed to have transferred well.

She collapsed fully, life going out of her and blood pouring across the floor as the merrow bound to her screamed in rage and fell on each other. I saw the blue people back up, slabs of rock and stone knives held ready as they waited for the merrow to kill each other. The crustaceans were fleeing, now the tide of battle had turned.

I laid there, bones shattered and life leaking out as they fought, the local inhabitants falling on the weakened survivors of the merrow, I could feel Oracle in my mind, her panicked focus as she tried to heal the wounds that were showing on my real body even now.

I slowly slumped to one side, losing the strength to hold myself upright, blood pooling around me, and I felt a presence nearby. I managed to lift my head, my arms weakly flopping, and I looked up at one of the locals.

He, as it was clearly a he, crouched before me, his head tilted to one side quizzically.

He had a ridge of fur that arched back from just above his jet-black eyes, growing from a point to a thick band that disappeared over the back of his head. The blue skin I could see now was made up of thousands of tiny iridescent blue scales, and his teeth were a mix of sharp points and thicker molars.

He opened his mouth and made a sound at me, a series of clicks that made me think of a dolphin, before nodding in satisfaction…then his right hand flashed out, the sharp claws ripping out my throat…

You have died…

Chapter Twenty

I gasped, sitting up and clutching at my chest and neck as I felt myself back in my own body. I coughed, blood frothing in my mouth, and turned to my side, spitting it out. I could hear people running about and voices raised in anger and confusion. I coughed again, spitting more blood out, and groaned. The cuts across my throat left my hand bloody, even as my mana dipped precipitously, with Oracle using it to heal me as quickly as possible.

Before I could speak, I felt something rammed into my lips, and I almost choked as liquid flooded my mouth.

“Drink it; trust me,” said a familiar voice and I looked up the arm holding the potion, to find Bane crouched there. I swallowed, trusting him immediately, and felt waves of pain running over me as my abused body rebelled against the damage.

It only took a handful of seconds, Oracle pushing as much mana as I had left into the ‘Battlefield Triage’ spell, before I was healing over, bones popping as they restructured fully, flesh knitting together, and organs returning to good health.

I finished swallowing the dregs of the potion, and I felt hands lying me back, legs behind me propping me half up, and something soft under my head, and I looked up to see Hanau helping to support me.

I glanced about, my mind slowing from its frantic post battle crash to take in the scene around me.

I was laid out on the deck, blood pooling around me, with my upper half laid across Hanau’s legs. He supported my head with a rolled-up shirt and was whispering to me to not panic, that it was all okay. His voice gentle and kind, even as Decin’s barked out orders nearby.

Bane rose from